13 quick actions to promote your reuse program

I want to maximise your impact with ideas that are easy to produce but have a big impact. These activities are force multipliers for your reuse program! Just pick one to do every week or month and you will be chipping away at culture change without much effort.

Here is the list!

So here is the list. Some ideas consist of a simple paragraph but others actually link off into extra resources

Action #1 Get senior management talking

The act of reuse hits many of your organisational strategic objectives

Reduce spend

Reduce waste

Reduce carbon via reduced purchasing

Improve collaboration with other organisations in the city/ region

Improve space management

For this reason it can be a popular talking point with the senior management, especially: Head of procurement, Head of Estates/ Facilities, Finance Director and the portfolio holders for sustainability, space and the estate.

Make sure that senior management know about your progress. Within Warp It you can set up an automatic monthly report (see here) which gets delivered straight to your senior management inbox. Now this sounds scary but these people will not mind getting a report into the savings you are making once a month.

The monthly report means reuse and sustainability are front of mind at least once a month and there is an increased chance that this becomes a topic of discussion during the small talk before meetings! To set this up

1) Log in as admin

2) Go to settings> edit profile

3) Scroll down to Warp It Implementation team and add in the email addresses that you wish to receive a monthly report.

Action #2 Get a list of procurers from procurement and target them!

The procurement department will have a database of everyone in the organisation who can purchase items. You can get this list and either

Action #3 Get occupational health on board.

Occupational health get a great deal of furniture requests for people who have various ailments. Occupational health furniture is very expensive. Make sure they have understanding of your reuse system so that they can

Keep a stock of occupational items to redistribution across the organisation

This idea came from Jack Walters and Lynne Richards at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

Action #4 Table talkers

This is a popular and effective solution- and helps you to become the face for reuse (Find out why that is important by clicking the link).

All estates have an area where most staff will go daily or weekly. This might be a common though fare or a meeting place. Where do your staff congregate on masse? The canteen, the lobby?

Where ever staff pass by regularly or congregate is a great place to tell them about your initiative. Put out a table with a free give away and leaflets and start telling them why reuse is good and how they can take part. Things to consider

Combine the table topper with other similar initiatives- like green week for example

Incentives get staff to come and talk to you

People might not have time, so print off leaflets or posters they can stick up back at the office.

Free prize draws are a great way to get contact details

Have a laptop on hand so they can sign up to your reuse system there!

Again, this idea came from Jack Walters and Lynne Richards at Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

You can add to this idea with some pull up banners, but this might cost a little more time and cost to deliver.

You can see a great example of this from Tracey Donovan at Rotherham Doncaster and South Humber NHS Foundation Trust here.

Action #5 Display on flat screens around the estate

You may have standard messages for staff and visitors displayed around your estate on screens. It is a very quick win to get your reuse program publicised on these screens. We have screen savers available as part of our campaign materials. Remember you only have seconds to have an influence so you need to stand out and the message should be as simple as possible.

Action #6 Case study- for departments

People do not just change culture of behaviour because they are told to do so. They need to be told in the right way, they need to see other's adopting the behaviour.. and they need to see that the new behaviour is worth doing. This is where case studies come in. You can produce a case study about your reuse program and the effect it has had on a department. Within Warp It you can see your best performing departments. Set up a meeting with them and explore why they like the system and what the benefits are. Create a case study out of this to share with other departments.

Action #8 Comms team

If you have not already please involve your comms team in your reuse programme. Or if you have not spoken with them in a few months get on the phone and take them out for coffee.

You need these people on your side. You are already too busy. They should be only too happy to tell your story and communicate about your reuse program, because this is a good news story and good news is in short supply!

They will do your job for you- gladly!!

We have written about this before here and you can get a great download to help you plan your comms strategy and don't forget we have lots of article templates for you here.

Action #9 Screen saver

What do most of your staff do when they get into work in the morning? After the cup of coffee. After the catch up with colleagues....yes they open their computer up! You can get into their life at this point by inserting a screen saver onto their standard home page. You will need to work with IT to get this done. Remember

This is a temporary thing as screen saver fatigue will soon set in so link it with a seasonal campaign like "Christmas clear out" or something

Action #10 Get Warp It icon added to desktop

If you can get the access to your reuse program into the area where staff visit most online you are onto a winner. So make sure that they can access the reuse system with minimal clicks from within their corporate account.

This might be simply providing an icon on screen which takes them to the log in page.

Going one step further you might want to consider single sign on. Which means once your staff members are logged into the network they can get straight into the reuse system with no logging in.

This idea comes from Alexander Ford from Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust.

Action #11 Target specific staff positions

Some staff are in a position where they have a large influence on a group of people due to their position and network.

Admin managers

Ward managers

Building managers

Head porter

Head cleaner

Work out who in your organisation has a big influence on a lot of staff either as a line manager or by managing a geographical area- and get them on board! Use this email as an intro.

This idea once again, came from the guys atNottinghamshireHealthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

This same idea can also be applied to those socially influential staff that you come across. We are not talking about management- rather those special people who find themsleves being unofficial centres of knowledge and communication in the staff body! More here.

Action #12 Cascade a memo via staff meeting networks

This is such an easy win but so effective!!

No one uses memos anymore so this technique has good impact because it stands out from the crowd!

This is a seldom used communication technique but most of the teams across your organisation will hold regular meetings. You can use our one page memo to send out through the governance structure to inform staff at team meeting level.

How do you hook into team meetings?

Use action number 1 to get the attention of senior mangers OR get senior management to agree at sustainability or procurement committee

Send senior manager's PA (or equivalent), the one pager and ask them to edit it as they see fit

Ask them to distribute to their staff meetings.

The one page memo gives an overview and makes it clear why your reuse system is good for the team.

Remember the idea here is to identify fairly easy actions, which will have a disproportionate impact!

Take your time and incorporate one action a week or month and let us know what the effect has been!

What simple ideas do you have for promoting your reuse program? Let us know in the comments below and we will collect them together and make a cheat sheet!

About the Author..

Daniel O'Connor

My goal is where reuse & repair is so convenient and desirable, that organisations do not throw anything away or buy anything new.. Where reusable items are redistributed for their 2nd and 3rd useful lives and when the items fail, they are diverted into repair.